


coda

by tweeker



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-06
Updated: 2012-06-06
Packaged: 2017-11-07 02:44:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/426033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tweeker/pseuds/tweeker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sollux only has a few hours left of his life, and he's determined to do something useful with them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	coda

The text before you falters, flashes, flickers from so bright it stings your eyes to so dim you have to squint.

The majority of the letters and numbers in front of you are starting to look like gibberish. 

What are you even doing? 

Your mind is wandering more than usual, and it's frustrating. You keep losing your place in the columns of predictable outcomes and possible answers for hypothetical scenarios.

It's the most complex code you've ever written, and you're not even sure the chat client will run it, but you've not had any other ideas so you're shooting for it. 

Your eyes blur over again, so you have to blink them back into focus and re-discover your progress. 

It's probably blood loss making it so hard to concentrate. Or exhaustion. 

You are also distracted by the smell of the others. You'd considered moving them, for your concentration's sake, but you were pretty concerned with conserving your energy.

The blood trickles into the corner of your mouth every now and then, but your hands are too numb to wipe it away. You had programmed an alarm to flash up every eight hours to remind you to wriggle your fingers and toes to keep them alive enough to flick a switch, just in case you got in trouble, but they'd not responded the last two times you tried making a fist. Oh well. 

You don't need them to type or read, so you don't need them.

Your lips are dry, coated with a film that is rapidly turning into a crust. Blood. His blood. Her blood. Your blood. You'd seen an awful lot of blood.  Your tongue is stuck to the roof of your mouth, bone dry, your throat parched and brittle the whole way down. You feel the need to swallow, but it smarts and you do not have the strength to cough. You go back to breathing with your mouth open, because it hurts less. The dry, dusty computer air of the lab was acrid with rotting flesh and what you're fairly sure is the smell of your own body giving up. It stings your sandpaper windpipe, but you need to focus on breathing because you keep forgetting to and choking on nothing. You can't afford to waste any more fucking time. 

You're not going to roll over and give up. You have a mission. 

He had to be stopped. 

Or at the very least, you needed to do something.

You are too weak to move and you have been for days. You are only really powered by your headache.

Thankfully, it's a bad one. It spurs you on. 

The colored text fuels the dull, hollow thumping in your skull. You are so dizzy you aren't sure how you're laying. The screens are all at the wrong angle, but you can't sit up to adjust so you've been reading vertically the whole time. 

Your psionics have never been so useful. The clacking of the keyboard is louder than your pulse, faster than your bloodpushers struggle, steadier than your rattling breathing. 

If you keep going, you might be able to get the network back up. 

If you finish your program, it might be able to warn the others.

If you keep yourself alive long enough, she might come and rescue you. 

**Author's Note:**

> i used to rp as Sollux as a computer program on trollmegle but nobody ever really got it.


End file.
